Summary of work for Week 10:

1. Create your Food assignment based on feedback from the professor and the class.
2. Consult Nathan (email him for an appointment or show up for office hours) for technical assistance if needed – and check the resource page for tips and methods in audio, video and photo editing.
3. Post your completed work with a title and short description for critique in our NEXT class meeting.

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See these past student works with Food:

Kimberly Realegeno: Poverty ASMR

See her references and notes on food insecurity here: https://experimentalstudio.ca/extendedpracticeslevel2/2020/09/08/kimberlys-work/

Carmen Mattear: Sips and Bites

Kaya Ratnasabapathy : Take the Compliment

Take the Compliment

Text is sourced from Kaya’s personal encounters with men and their micro-aggressive compliments comparing her skin colour to food, and objectifying her skin colour.

FOOD ART:

Summary of work for week 9:

1. Review all lecture materials and videos below
2. Write about at least one artwork, or food-culture reference that inspires your next assignment
3. Post all research notes /images for a FOOD ART proposal – we will discuss your proposals and offer support in the next class.

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Look at these approaches to exploring food by artists:

FAST FOODWORKS

“The pancakes were vegan (flax seeds being a cheaper—and more ethical?—binding agent than eggs) and local (because, although it was more expensive, the local flour was in the bin beside the less-expensive, non-local flour and I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t seen it). The recipe was for extra fluffy pancakes (for obvious reasons). The apartment smelled very good until the pancakes dried up and shrank away from the ceiling. When I composted them I discovered that the pancakes had become colourful with mold in the places where they were pressed together and still moist.

My partner asked me if I made A stack of pancakes to hold up the ceiling because the ceiling fell two years prior.  I said no, although the question reminded me of the fact that the ceiling did, indeed fall. So perhaps that is the reason. ” AT from https://aislinnthomas.ca/index.php/portfolio/a-stack-of-pancakes-to-hold-up-the-ceiling/

Rod, Bernie, Peggy, Aislinn

Video, 2009

Rapport Report, a video screening curated by Tejpal Ajji, described this video of narrative vignettes:  “Using her kitchen as a set for storytelling, Thomas recounts a family history using recipes representing her father, mother, grandfather, and herself.”  Below is an excerpt of the video.  Rod, Peggy, Bernie, Aislinn was included in CAFK+A.11 and several screenings.

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In Love with Patty Chang:

Christian Jankowski – Bow hunting in the supermarket

Women With Kitchen Appliances

FOOD ART Assignment:

For next class, propose a way to use food in a short video or photographic series that explores aspects of food other than how it tastes –

This might include actions that explore:

• The tactile/material qualities of food and food-related devices
• The sounds of food, the smells of food
• Memories of food
• Food and emotions
• Popular representations of food in culture
• Relationships of food to the body
• Food and gender
• Visual aspects of food
• How food changes in time
• How food connects us to each other

Think of a series of gestures – working with food on hand and create a work that pushes the limits of how we expect to relate to food.

This can be done in your home, with food and related implements, and/or you may also work with found video/images from other sources in your work.

Create a video up to 1 minute (can be for a loop) or a series of 12 images – consider instagram as your final exhibition site for this work – and what works well on that platform. We will discuss this in class.

Summary of work for Week 8

1. Finish and revise ZOOM videos and post to blog
2. Listen to the podcast and write reflection notes
3. Acquire ingredients – and prepare them according to video below before Tuesday’s class.

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Listen to the podcast:

The Rise and Fall of Bread: a simple staple with a complex legacy

The Podcast is available at this link here, or using your podcast app on your phone, search for “CBC Ideas – The Rise and Fall of Bread”: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-rise-and-fall-of-bread-a-simple-staple-with-a-complex-legacy-1.5564511

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WRITE IN YOUR BLOG POST up to 500 words:

What does bread mean to you? What is your family’s relationship to bread? What is the centre of your meal – or your comfort food – if it’s rarely bread?

Why do you think so many people have been baking bread during the pandemic? Which aspects of the podcast did you find surprising, or striking and why?

How do cooking and art making intersect? What do the activities have in common, and in what ways are they separate?

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Excercise: MAKE BREAD!

Acquire these inexpensive ingredients and prepare your dough for the oven before our next class.

Each step only takes a couple of minutes – get all your ingredients ready, and begin at 12:30 pm to start mixing!

Quick Bread Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 +1/2 tsp. INSTANT yeast (this is equal to about half of one little envelope)

1 tsp sugar (or you can use 2tsp honey, or maple syrup)

1 cup warm water + a little extra if needed to make a wet dough

1 tsp. salt

Butter for greasing pan

Mixing bowl and spoon

One pan for the bread – I use a loaf pans, you can use a pyrex bowl, cassarole dish, or some other smallish oven safe vessel. Watch video for details….

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METHOD: (Each step only takes a couple of minutes)

12:30 pM on Tuesday: Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl: the flour, salt, sugar, and instant yeast. Add the warm water and mix to a wet sloppy dough.

Cover with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place for 1+ 1/2 hours.

Generously butter your pan.

2:PM on Tuesday: Separate dough from bowl, and scoop into prepared pan. Let rest for 20-30 minutes. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F.

2:30 on Tuesday: Show your dough to the class in class, and together we will stick them in the oven! Set timer for 15 minutes.

When the timer goes off, reduce heat to 375, and set timer again to bake another 20 minutes.

When done, take bread out of oven and pan to cool!

Be prepared to discuss the podcast during class, and to eat and share some bread!

We’ll talk about bread, food and food-art.

1. Watch the videos and read about the works below.
2. Write notes on videos based on questions below.
3. Post your final video on the blog with a description that references artworks seen in class.

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TECH TIME this week will have Nathan consulting on all your video art ideas throughout class. He will promote his DaVinci Resolve workshop and his resources for sizing videos for the web.

Watch:

Michelle Pearson Clarke

Suck Teeth Compositions (After Rashaad Newsome)

3-channel, HD video installation with sound
16 x 9 format, 9:47 | 2018

In Shade Compositions (2005-present), a series of live performances and videos, the African-American artist Rashaad Newsome explores issues of Black authorship, appropriation, identity and belonging by conducting choirs of women (and sometimes, gay men) of colour who snap their fingers, smack their lips, roll their eyes, and cock their heads, creating expressive linguistic symphonies out of the nonverbal gestures and vocalizations of African-American women. Suck Teeth Compositions (After Rashaad Newsome) is a three-channel video and sound installation that both responds to and extends this inquiry by focusing on sucking teeth, an everyday oral gesture shared by Black people of African and Caribbean origin and their diasporas, including those of us who live here in Canada.

Referred to variously as kiss teeth, chups, steups, and stchoops, to suck teeth is to produce a sound by sucking in air through the teeth, while pressing the tongue against the upper or lower teeth, with the lips pursed or slightly flattened. West African in origin, this verbal gesture is used to signify a wide range of negative affects, including irritation, disapproval, disgust, disrespect, anger and frustration. Given that representations of African-American Blackness dominate and define mainstream understandings of the Black experience, when it comes to anti-black racism, most white Canadians are allowed to feel comfortable and are supported in their comfort by the historical and ongoing narratives of “not me,” “not us,” “only them, down there.” Suck Teeth Compositions (After Rashaad Newsome) is thus a response to the frustrations of living within this denial, and an expression of the anger and pain that many Black people often experience living in Canada, where we are always assumed to be better off, if not completely free of racism. (From https://www.michelepearsonclarke.com/suck-teeth-compositions/)

Installation Photo (Royal Ontario Museum, 2018): Peter Schnobb

Basil AlZeri

Basil AlZeri is a Palestian artist based in Toronto working in performance, video, installation, food, and public art interventions/projects. His work is grounded in his practice as an art educator and community worker. He explores the intersections between the quotidian and art, and strives for interactions with the public, using social interactions and exchanges to create gestures of generosity.

AlZeri’s performance work has been shown across the Americas.

The Mobile Kitchen Lab

With The Mobile Kitchen Lab (2010 – present), AlZeri performs simple and generous gestures, inviting his guests to identify the Palestinian stories of land, resources and labour that are built into his recipes.

Initiated in 2010, his durational performances feature live projected instructions provided by his mother, Suad, via Skype.

Hear a radio interview on the project here.

Artists make Zoom Backgrounds:

Look at Art Metropole’s artworks for Zoom backgrounds:

https://technicaldifficulties.artmetropole.com/

WRITE NOTES:

Make notes on two of the above videos. What strikes you in each of them? Describe the ways artists use the media of video technologies to create affecting experiences for viewers. How would the works be different if these media were not used? What do you think the conceptual prompts/instructions were for the performers?

EXERCISE:

Record and edit your new work for teleconferencing technologies. You may work together with others from the class. Post your finished work (up to 4 minute excerpt) to the blog with a concise description of the piece.

Get help from Nathan with your editing, and with sizing the video for the web. Nathan’s office hours are Monday and Thursday 1-4, and he is also available by email for appointments. See resources for video on this blog, under Resources.